American Ninja What!!

After topping off the amazing winter and spring season of climbing with the first ascent of Force of Nature(V14) I found myself in the hottest part of Utah and gearing up for a season of work here in Zion, Utah. Unmotivated by the nuclear temperatures, training for climbing was out of the question. So what else do we do?

I heard word from my good friend Noah Kaufman that he got accepted onto a TV show know as American Ninja Warrior, I became intrigued and in the last minute on the last day I threw together a submission video. Unfortunately I was too late and the casting crew informed me that my region was full and they had already picked their competitors for the year. At the moment I could care less about being on the show, I just really wanted to test my skills on the obstacle’s. This really bummed me out, so I further researched getting into the competition and found out there is one last chance. It involved getting into whats called a walk-on-line.

We packed our bags and drove to Denver to get in line, despite knowing that we had very little if not any chance of getting picked. I decided to make myself stand out somehow and it just so happens I had a Jesus costume laying around. 5 days of sleep deprivation and frying in the direct sun left us both exhausted. Regardless, we stayed strong to the line and kept our sites on the main goal of getting chosen to have a crack at what looked like the most exciting obstacle course in the world!

With the walk-on-line significantly growing in numbers reaching nearly 200 by the last day(Laura being the only female) I decided it was time to bust out the costume and get ready to impress the casting crew. It was rumored that they would be coming within the hour to choose out of the hundreds of wannabe ninjas, and so it happened.